Mezhrabpom films: The Red Dream Factory at MoMA, April 11-30 in NYC

Mezhrabpom: The Red Dream Factory
April 11–30, 2012
Museum of Modern Art, New York City


Organized by the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin, and the Berlin International Film Festival, The Red Dream Factory presents a selection of extraordinary films from the legendary Soviet film studio, Mezhrabpom, made between its 1922 founding by Moisei Aleinikov and its transformation into a studio for children’s films 14 years later by decree of Josef Stalin.

Mother. 1926. USSR. Directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin. MoMA

The exhibition includes not only acknowledged masterworks of world cinema by filmmakers like Boris Barnet, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Yakov Protazanov, but also rarely screened jewels like Alexander Andriyevsky’s science-fiction fable Lost Sensation (1935), and V. A. Schneider’s Soviet “Western” The Golden Lake (1934). Animated and documentary films are also featured, including the Soviet Union’s first sound film, Nikolai Ekk’s The Road to Life (1931).


“Classics of Russian revolutionary cinema, such as Vsevolod Pudovkin’s The End of St. Petersburg (1927), were made by Mezhrabpom. At the same time, the studio focused on topics revolving around people’s everyday lives. Artistically sophisticated films from all kinds of genres thrilled international audiences and inspired the entire European film avant-garde,” says Rainer Rother, organizer of the retrospective and Artistic Director, Deutsche Kinemathek–Museum für Film und Fernsehen.


All silent films with Russian intertitles will have live simultaneous translation by Anna Kadysheva. All Russian sound films will be screened with English subtitles.


Organized for the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) by Alexander Schwarz and Guenter Agde. The New York presentation is organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, and Rajendra Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator, Department of Film, MoMA. Prints courtesy of MoMA; Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek; Gosfilmofond, Moscow; Cinémathèque Française, Paris; Filmmuseum München; and Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1264